As mobile broadband services emerge, operators often provide information of the maximum bit rate that could be achieved from a technological point of view, but due to e.g. fundamental radio aspects, network planning, behaviour of other users, load in the network, etc. the difference between achieved throughput and maximum theoretical throughput can often be significant.
This might sometimes be a source of dispute not being able to gain knowledge on if the current area is a “good” or “bad” spot, and hence e.g. if a specific high bit rate service (MBB) can be used at the moment.
It would therefore be pedagogical with the possibility to make users aware of what end user bit rate they could get from the network at that specific time and at that specific location. It would support an easy way to optimize the location of phone, modem or laptop.
In addition, given knowledge of expected throughput, background applications could choose to utilize the network more efficiently.
There are currently no known accurate methods to enable that the mobile terminal can predict what bit rate it would have if starting e.g. file down load at that time instance, i.e. predicting available bit rate without accessing the network.
Load information on its own, such as user perceived quality assessment performed by the mobile terminal itself within the cell, based e.g. on radio-link quality and utilization factor will not provide enough accurate bit rates or user quality estimations since scheduling policy, number of mobiles to share the channel with and radio quality of other mobile terminals in the cell has a significant impact. And further, the load estimate can be rather uncertain when not explicit signalled from the network.